]]>First off, a BIG thanks to everyone who posted “good lucks” on the Philly half marathon I ran this past weekend. I ran with my brother and sister and we ran the whole race together (and had a great time doing it). Weather was cold but I felt absolutely great once we got going. Anyway, thanks again!

Now onto the topic of the day. A few things have changed lately when it comes to shooting tethered into Lightroom. So I figured I’d cover them all in one post. Also, I’m not doing a full tutorial on shooting tethered mainly because that’s been done a few times already. Here’s a link to Scott Kelby’s blog where he’s got a tutorial on shooting tethered into Lightroom. Sound good? OK, here’s your options:

1) If you shoot Canon then you can use Canon’s free EOS Utility. This is probably your best option if you’re a Canon shooter.

3) If you’re a Nikon shooter then you also have a free option but it’s only for Windows users only. It’s called DiyPhotoBits.com Camera Control and they’ve got a video on their site on how to use it.

4) Finally, Tom Hogarty (Lightroom’s Product Manager) let me in on a plug-in for Lightroom 2 (for Mac only though). It’s called MountainStorm Lightroom Tether and you can grab it here. Of course if you find it useful, it’s nice to leave a donation considering your other alternatives are not free. I’ve tested it out and I have to say it works pretty darn good. I’ve used Camera Control Pro for so long so it’s a little weird to change, but I think I’m now switching over to the free plug-in.(edit: Sorry everyone. I forgot to mention one small thing that I was reminded of in the comments. Some one had told me not to use the “Enhanced” setting so make sure you leave it unchecked. Seems pretty unstable in this mode)

So as you can see here, the world of shooting tethered is still a bit confusing, with a few different options. The best solution would be for Adobe to build tethered shooting support directly into Lightroom (like Aperture does). That’s not a groundbreaking request though, and I think the Adobe folks hear it loud and clear so let’s keep our fingers crossed for the future. One more thing. If you’ve got experience with any of the tethered shooting options above be sure to let us know which works best for you (or not) in the comments area. Thanks!

]]>Here’s a tip I picked up from Scott Kelby recently. If you’re dragging a Graduated filter gradient on to your photo you can quickly change the direction of the gradient by pressing the apostrophe key. For example, if you drag from the top of the photo toward the bottom, whatever effects you’ve got set will appear at the top and gradiate downward. However, if you press the apostrophe key you can reverse it. It also works after you’ve already created a gradient. Just target the little meatball dot that appears on your photo and try pressing apostrophe and Lightroom will reverse the gradient there too. Cool little tip huh? Thanks Scott!

Well, I hope you all have a great weekend. I’m in the airport now heading to Philadelphia (and New Jersey) to run a half marathon with my brother and sister this weekend. Wish me luck!

]]>A few days ago I posed the question to our Photoshop Guys facebook page (click here if you want to join our page), to see what topics people were interested in. I got a lot of good responses so I thought I’d start picking away at them. This time I thought I’d cover watermarking your photos. I’ll be the first to admit, it’s more or less of a hack in Lightroom, as it’s not really meant for this. However, once you get it set up to watermark, Lightroom does offer a good quick alternative over using Photoshop, Batch Processing and Actions, etc… Hope you enjoy!

]]>58Matt Kloskowskihttp://www.mattk.comhttp://www.lightroomkillertips.com/?p=9412008-11-13T14:49:15Z2008-11-13T14:49:15ZThe post Weekly Worth-a-clicks appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Here’s some interesting links I’ve found in the last week:

]]>15Matt Kloskowskihttp://www.mattk.comhttp://www.lightroomkillertips.com/?p=9352008-11-11T14:58:03Z2008-11-11T14:58:03ZThe post Presets – Noise Removal appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>I’ve been using Lightroom 2’s noise removal sliders more and more lately and getting some decent results. I won’t lie. Personally, I still go to Nik’s Dfine for my heavy lifting when it comes to noise removal but LR does do a good job when the noise isn’t quite that bad. One of the issues I’ve had is that tiny little preview in the Detail panel in LR. Normally, it should be easy enough to adjust the sliders without presets. But that detail panel is just too small and I usually wind up zooming to 100% view in the main window. I found that having a few presets to just click on became more useful to me so now, you have ‘em too. On a side note, I also noticed that the low/medium settings worked well for most photos. I also threw in just a bit of sharpening to each one so keep that in mind as well. Have a great day!

]]>I’ve got another video up that goes over an area I struggled with until recently. That little color swatch in the Adjustment Brush tool (in LR 2 only), always acted kinda weird for me. Then I sat down and had a talk with it and said “Listen here color swatch thingee, we need to have a talk…” – kidding. I did sit down one afternoon and start messing around with it at extreme settings and it was then I figured out what was going on behind the scenes and I’m able to get more predictable results from it.

Well I hope you have a great weekend. The Bucs have a bye week here in Tampa Bay so I guess I’ll actually have to get the lawn mower out and cut the grass this Sunday but I’ll be in front of the TV in spirit See ya!

]]>Happy preset day once again. I’ve created a second volume of color tints that picks up where the last volume left off. The first volume was a bit warmer in nature but these tints tend to be more on the cooling side (cyans, blues, purples). And to make things easier for you, if you missed the volume 1 tint presets I’ve included them down below on this same page so you can grab both of them while you’re here. Oh yeah, one more thing. Don’t forget that part of tinting involves turning the photo to black and white first. I’ve used the default grayscale B&W conversion here but this is definitely an area you should look into tweaking after you’ve applied the preset. Have a great Monday!

]]>18Matt Kloskowskihttp://www.mattk.comhttp://www.lightroomkillertips.com/?p=9152008-10-30T13:57:52Z2008-10-30T13:57:52ZThe post Weekly Worth-a-click appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
]]>Howdy folks. Thanks for all the great comments about the graduated filter presets earlier this week. Glad you enjoyed ‘em. Here’s a few links of interest:

? Fotomagico 2.6 is out (the slideshow software that I swear by) and it now supports Adobe Lightroom 2 libraries.

? Lastly, we have a facebook page. I wanted to keep my personal facebook page for close friends and family members to view. So we (the Photoshop Guys – Dave, Scott and I) created a Photoshop Guys facebook page. We’ll post behind the scenes photos, links etc… on it so make sure you stop by and “friend” it

? Finally, I posted some answers to some comment-questions for Tuesday preset post. In fact, I do this as often as I can so make sure you go back every few days and re-read the comments from any posts you like here.

]]>I’m back in Tampa from Photo Plus in New York last week and I wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who came up to say hi during the show. It’s always great to get out and meet the people I see comments from here on the blog. OK, now for some presets. This week I’ve got some graduated filter presets. There are literally a ton of ways I can go with these presets so I’ve decided to get fairly specific and create presets for blue skies. When you download them, you’ll see they’re listed in -1, -2, and -3 stop increments (just makes more sense to me then 0.3, 0.6, and 0.9). However, if you’re the traditional filter kinda person, then by all means feel free to change the names once you import them (just right-click on the preset name to rename it). You’ll also see that I’ve included placement for 3 locations. Top Third, Bottom third, and Middle. The top and bottom probably make sense since we typically try to position a horizon at the top third or bottom third. However, after looking through some of my photos, I’ve realized that when there’s another subject in the photo the horizon will often need to shift toward the middle which is why I included that one. Oh, and there’s also separate presets for vertical and horizontal photos because Lightroom has issues with presets created for just one or the other. Finally, there’s a few other settings thrown in there to help enhance the sky as well as any clouds in the sky. Whew! That sounds like a lot for some simple presets doesn’t it? The good news is all you have to do is click on them to use the preset.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them. I’ve got a few more ideas which I’m sure you’ll see in the coming weeks. Thanks and make sure you leave a comment and let us know what you think.

]]>I’m heading out to Photo Plus today so make sure you stop by the Peachpit booth at 1pm to say hi. Also, Adobe just announced the official release of Lightroom 2.1. You may remember that they announced a release candidate of 2.1 a while back. Release candidate is really just a fancy word for beta software and, naturally, most people weren’t very keen on downloading the beta. Here’s a link to Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty’s announcement on his blog. When you open Lightroom 2 it should automatically ask you if you want to upgrade (at least mine did). So have at it and let me know your thoughts on the update.